1 (edited by zurk 2012-05-16 21:10:44)

Topic: Zurk's Chumby 8 Offline Firmware ( Insignia Infocast / chumby8 only! )

This is my chumby 8 offline firmware. it does not rely on chumby.com servers at all. You may continue to use network services (e.g. weather) from other sites but all access to chumby.com is blocked.

**NOTE**
Please post any technical questions here : http://sourceforge.net/projects/zurk/forums/forum/12064
I am no longer very active on these forums but other people can help you with simple questions here.

Usage :
1. Download the zip file from here : http://sourceforge.net/projects/zurk/fi … p/download
2. Take a blank USB flash drive and unzip all the files keeping the directory structure intact. make sure the debugchumby file (included in the zip) is on the root directory of the usb disk.
3. Put the usb drive in your chumby and switch it off. then switch it on.
4. select control panel - change your time zone to your correct location.
5. Thats it! Your chumby should be fully setup with no more chumby.com requirements. You have 5 widgets in the default channel. By editing profile in the html/ folder of the usb drive with notepad, you can modify the zipcode and location so you get proper weather for your area.  If you want to reset your chumby simply remove the usb flash drive and shut your chumby off completely and back on. done.

You can now deactivate your chumby and delete your chumby.com account! It is completely free!
Let me know if you have any issues. This works for chumby 8 and insignia.

Re: Zurk's Chumby 8 Offline Firmware ( Insignia Infocast / chumby8 only! )

Much Thanks. I will give this a try some time this week.  I hope it does not become necessary but if it does I am glad to have this option.

Tar, feathers, congress. Some assembly required.

Re: Zurk's Chumby 8 Offline Firmware ( Insignia Infocast / chumby8 only! )

I have uploaded new firmware with defaults set to 88 volume (around 3/4 of max). I have also put in default night mode brightness and day mode. now it should play alarm / music ok.
I've replaced the files. please re-download v2.0 from the same link.

Re: Zurk's Chumby 8 Offline Firmware ( Insignia Infocast / chumby8 only! )

v3.0
---
NTP bug fixed.
removal of sony dash and chumby magic keys.

Re: Zurk's Chumby 8 Offline Firmware ( Insignia Infocast / chumby8 only! )

I am really happy (for now...) with the new chumby control panel. i have an infocast 8 and i am really interested to try something new like your firmware. Is it possible you could make a video preview for all chumby users who want to install this?

Re: Zurk's Chumby 8 Offline Firmware ( Insignia Infocast / chumby8 only! )

video preview ? it takes literally 5 seconds to try this out.
download, unzip to the root of a blank usb stick, shove it in the back of your chumby/infocast and switch on. done.
want to use it regularly ? go to settings, change the timezone to your local timezone. done.
dont want it ? pull out the usb stick. reboot the chumby/infocast. done.

Re: Zurk's Chumby 8 Offline Firmware ( Insignia Infocast / chumby8 only! )

v4.0
---
misc cleanup.
reduced cpu usage for less heat.
added offline photo display.

Re: Zurk's Chumby 8 Offline Firmware ( Insignia Infocast / chumby8 only! )

zurk wrote:

v4.0
reduced cpu usage for less heat.

how did you reduce cpu usage?  is this a mod that people running the regular chumby/infocast 8 firmware can do?

Re: Zurk's Chumby 8 Offline Firmware ( Insignia Infocast / chumby8 only! )

dont know if you can do it with regular firmware. my firmware has diverged significantly from the regular.
basically i introduced a bunch of tweaks which chucked out all the network testing stuff and used the short circuit stuff in the control panel which is triggered by local widget loading.

Re: Zurk's Chumby 8 Offline Firmware ( Insignia Infocast / chumby8 only! )

Doktor Jones wrote:
zurk wrote:

v4.0
reduced cpu usage for less heat.

how did you reduce cpu usage?  is this a mod that people running the regular chumby/infocast 8 firmware can do?

Why would you want to decrease cpu usage?? Don't you have to make kernal mods to that kind of stuff?

Re: Zurk's Chumby 8 Offline Firmware ( Insignia Infocast / chumby8 only! )

v5.0
----
Insignia 8 running Chumby 8 v1.8.2 firmware -- sound bugfix.
Ad blocking for all ad networks.
Misc tweaks.

this should be the last update for a while i think. my infocast8 works nicely so i see no need for further improvements.

Re: Zurk's Chumby 8 Offline Firmware ( Insignia Infocast / chumby8 only! )

Will control panel updates from Chumby still apply with your custom firmware or does it break that function?

thanks for all your work on this.  I've been hoping for something like this in case chumby servers go away for good.

Re: Zurk's Chumby 8 Offline Firmware ( Insignia Infocast / chumby8 only! )

right. i want it to keep updating from chumby so chumby can keep removing features from it as they lose licenses to content (NYT podcasts being the latest example)...not.
it will never update from chumby. its stuck on the last good version of the control panel (one version before the current one). all access to chumby.com is thoroughly purged from the offline firmware.
if they come up with a compelling bugfix or update which doesnt remove a bunch of useful stuff i might update it and post it up. you will need to redownload/reunzip it on a usb disk to update.
you can put the new control panel manually on it if you want to by replacing the swf file by copying it from an online chumby. same way as you modify pictures/music on the usb disk.

Re: Zurk's Chumby 8 Offline Firmware ( Insignia Infocast / chumby8 only! )

Sorry, I know that was kind of a stupid question but I didn't know if the calls to the chumby servers were made by something in the firmware, control panel or both.  I was assuming firmware since that is what you posted, but from your answer, it's obviously both.

Thanks again for all the work.  You made a lot of people very relieved that there is an option to keep our chumbys working regardless of what happens to the chumby serves in the future.

15 (edited by zurk 2012-03-25 17:42:04)

Re: Zurk's Chumby 8 Offline Firmware ( Insignia Infocast / chumby8 only! )

chumby.com has tried its best to make reliance on their servers difficult to remove. this is incidentally why the other offline firmware project for the classics is going to get a huge surprise when chumby.com actually goes offline.
also, its a huge frigging annoyance at how many scripts besides the control panel have a reliance on the chumby.com infrastructure for no reason at all. i wont even comment on why bog standard chumby ones have hardcoded urls to the sony dash infrastructure in their scripts. complete insanity for a simple alarm clock/flash movie player.


V 6.0
-----
Addition of first non chumby widget (Weather Underground RapidFire)
Addition of nano text editor
Fix for photo widget for better screen resolution

Re: Zurk's Chumby 8 Offline Firmware ( Insignia Infocast / chumby8 only! )

Are you able to apply this to the device itself rather than booting off a flash drive?

Re: Zurk's Chumby 8 Offline Firmware ( Insignia Infocast / chumby8 only! )

I just want to thank Zurk for all the work he has put into his software. I feel much better knowing I have this safety net for my Chumbys.

The addition of a "native" Zurk widget is a great sign that my Chumby One / Infocast 8 may continue to gain added fuctionality if Chumby Inc. goes dark.

I let my coding skills lapse 30 years ago so I am pretty much at the mercy of people like Zurk.

Tar, feathers, congress. Some assembly required.

Re: Zurk's Chumby 8 Offline Firmware ( Insignia Infocast / chumby8 only! )

prdfy wrote:

Are you able to apply this to the device itself rather than booting off a flash drive?

yes you simply need to copy the files to the built in microSD and overwrite the existing files. They take approx 300MB on the C8 and 220MB on the C1.
The way you do it is :
stop_control_panel
sync
mount -o remount,rw /
cp -ir all the files keeping the directory structure intact one directory at a time (careful!).
cp debugchumby to /psp/rfs1/userhook2
sync
mount -o remount,ro /
sync

then reboot.

Re: Zurk's Chumby 8 Offline Firmware ( Insignia Infocast / chumby8 only! )

Nothing too special here, over-sized to do something small. It would be better if you made your own control panel, access to a terminal emulator, and copy widgets from the chumby servers, instead of the lame 6 or so you already have.

20 (edited by zurk 2012-04-03 15:35:46)

Re: Zurk's Chumby 8 Offline Firmware ( Insignia Infocast / chumby8 only! )

Excellent idea !
I'll be sure to work on it while driving my nuclear powered flying car to work .... sometime in 2050.
in the meantime demonstrate your skillz to the rest of us by working on it yourself.

Also,

V7.0
-----
Fix images for correct screen size
Integrate java
Builtin speech engine
Chumby weather api fix for all cities on the planet (See included changelog for how to set this up, it takes approx 1 hour for it to initially populate the weather for your region once you have set it up)

V7.1
-----
minor weather api tweak

21

Re: Zurk's Chumby 8 Offline Firmware ( Insignia Infocast / chumby8 only! )

thanks for sharing zurk

Re: Zurk's Chumby 8 Offline Firmware ( Insignia Infocast / chumby8 only! )

Zurk,

   Great work.  I tried edit psp/zwapi.sh with my city and country code on the USB drive and then plug it back in, reboot chumby.  But the weather code does not change. Is there a cache somewhere I need to clear before I can see the weather in my area? Do I need to manually run zwapi.sh from ssh to update the weather codes?
I also modified profiles of the offline widget with my zip code but the weather widgets did not pick up the new area code.  Is there something I need to do after the reboot to force an update.  Please advice.  Thanks in advance.

CF



zurk wrote:

Excellent idea !
I'll be sure to work on it while driving my nuclear powered flying car to work .... sometime in 2050.
in the meantime demonstrate your skillz to the rest of us by working on it yourself.

Also,

V7.0
-----
Fix images for correct screen size
Integrate java
Builtin speech engine
Chumby weather api fix for all cities on the planet (See included changelog for how to set this up, it takes approx 1 hour for it to initially populate the weather for your region once you have set it up)

V7.1
-----
minor weather api tweak

23 (edited by zurk 2012-04-07 15:21:20)

Re: Zurk's Chumby 8 Offline Firmware ( Insignia Infocast / chumby8 only! )

no cache. the weather should automatically populate in about an hour. You can manually run the zwapi.sh file once to populate the weather initially to test. Make sure the temperature displayed in the first SkyHappennings Weather edition widget is correct and you should be good to go.
Make sure you use the exact city and country code as per this website :
http://m.wund.com/cgi-bin/findweather/g … ris+France
(e.g. replace your city and country instead of Paris+France and make sure it comes up. If it does put it into zwapi.sh and save the file. If it does not you need to alter the city and country code so that wunderground can understand it).
You do NOT need to put your zipcode or modify the SkyHappennings weather edition widget any further once you have edited zwapi.sh. The default zipcode of ZZ should be kept as is.
For the wgraph widget you need to put in your closest station code not the zip code. The widgets work for all countries the same way as the forecast does. Get your station code from here :
http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstat … ted+States
You can select different countries as well.

Make sure you save the files and unmount cleanly  (select remove usb disk from your windows taskbar) or the usb disk will not be saved properly. You can check it by sshing into your chumby and type cat filename to check the contents of filename. e.g. cat /mnt/usb/psp/zwapi.sh
Also check to make sure networking is working on your offline chumby. The news widgets should not show blank screens. They should populate the news correctly. You need to set it up via control panel if the networking is not working obviously since the offline firmware disables all of the chumby network detection by default (to allow use in a non networked environment).

Re: Zurk's Chumby 8 Offline Firmware ( Insignia Infocast / chumby8 only! )

Zurk,

   Thanks a lot for the thorough explanation.  I double checked zwapi.sh by ssh'ed into the chumby8 and it contains the correct city and country code.  I then waited for an hour and I can see that the temperature matches my local forecast.  However, it is still displaying ZZ as the location even though I edited both the profile and the show files under www/xml.  I am not sure why there are two files with identical xml info and only 5 widgets are listed even though I can see 14 widgets when the offline chumby booted up.  I have also changed the weather station code in those two files but it is still showing the old weather station code that came with your zip file.  It seemed there may be another profile file at work that display the 14 widgets but I cannot find it.

Regards,

CF

zurk wrote:

no cache. the weather should automatically populate in about an hour. You can manually run the zwapi.sh file once to populate the weather initially to test. Make sure the temperature displayed in the first SkyHappennings Weather edition widget is correct and you should be good to go.
Make sure you use the exact city and country code as per this website :
http://m.wund.com/cgi-bin/findweather/g … ris+France
(e.g. replace your city and country instead of Paris+France and make sure it comes up. If it does put it into zwapi.sh and save the file. If it does not you need to alter the city and country code so that wunderground can understand it).
You do NOT need to put your zipcode or modify the SkyHappennings weather edition widget any further once you have edited zwapi.sh. The default zipcode of ZZ should be kept as is.
For the wgraph widget you need to put in your closest station code not the zip code. The widgets work for all countries the same way as the forecast does. Get your station code from here :
http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstat … ted+States
You can select different countries as well.

Make sure you save the files and unmount cleanly  (select remove usb disk from your windows taskbar) or the usb disk will not be saved properly. You can check it by sshing into your chumby and type cat filename to check the contents of filename. e.g. cat /mnt/usb/psp/zwapi.sh
Also check to make sure networking is working on your offline chumby. The news widgets should not show blank screens. They should populate the news correctly. You need to set it up via control panel if the networking is not working obviously since the offline firmware disables all of the chumby network detection by default (to allow use in a non networked environment).

Re: Zurk's Chumby 8 Offline Firmware ( Insignia Infocast / chumby8 only! )

yup. it will show ZZ as the location regardless. no way to change that without help from the original author which is unlikely. It will however match the forecast and temp to your local area based on what you have placed in zwapi.sh.
For the widgets you are probably editing the chumby one profile xml. Both the chumby1 and chumby8 firmwares are built from the same common source.
The one you need to edit for the chumby8 is located in /mnt/usb/psp/lighty/html/xapi/dev/show. There is also a shell script you need to run in that same directory after you edit and save the profile. just edit the profile, save, run the script and reboot the chumby.